Espen Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

SYNOPSIS:

Aarseth argues that cybertexts constitute a wide range of texts from ancient to modern and digital. The digital technologies represent only an extension of a kind of literature, ergodic literature that requires physical acts on the part of the reader.

EXCERPT:

"A cybertext is a machine for the production of variety of expression. . . . The study of cybertexts reveals the misprision of the spacio-dynamic metaphors of narrative theory, because ergodic literature incarnates these models in a way linear text narratives do not." (4)

"Cybertext, then, is not a 'new,' 'revolutionary' form of text with capabilities only made possible through the invention of the digital computer. Neither is it a radical break with old-fashioned textuality, although it would be easy to make it appear so. Cybertext is a perspective on all forms of textuality, a way to expand the scope of literary studies to include phenomena that today are perceived as outside of, or marginalized by, the field of literature--or even in opposition to it, for (as I make clear later) purely extraneous reasons." (18)